SCREEN GEMS.

`Earth' is a testament to Soviet Silent Cinema

June 07, 2002|By John Petrakis. Special to the Tribune.

Sergei Eisenstein. V.I. Pudovkin. Alexander Dovzhenko. Though these three filmmakers tend to get lumped together as the Terrible Trio of Soviet Silent Cinema, the truth is that the styles and goals of these cinematic pioneers were quite diverse, beginning with the fact that Dovzhenko was less didactic than his two contemporaries.

The political message was always there in his films, but it tended to get overwhelmed by the larger, more eternal issues that Dovzhenko focused on: birth, life, family, work and death. To that end, he employed a series of memorable images that worked both as visual metaphor and as a still-life of everyday existence.

It is why Dovzhenko, more than the other Russians, is oftentimes referred to as a "film poet."

Never was that poetry more evident than in 1930's "Earth" ((star)(star)(star)(star)), Dovzhenko's undisputed masterpiece, that regularly appears on lists of the Top 10 movies of all time.

Running a mere 62 minutes, the plot of this black-and-white silent gem is intentionally unadorned, dealing with the struggle between landowners and farmers in a small Ukrainian village. When the farmers declare their solidarity by joining together to purchase a tractor, one of the landowners, in a blind rage, shoots and kills one of the farmers as he dances down the road.

But in lieu of turning the film into a murder mystery or a tale of retribution and revenge, Dovzhenko handles the seemingly untimely death as one more aspect of daily existence, a tiny piece of a grand puzzle that comprises the arc of life.

"Earth" includes many memorable images, including the peaceful death of an old man surrounded by apples, the farmers "working together" by urinating into the dry radiator of a tractor, and the intense mourning of the farmer's wife as she strips off her clothes and shrieks to the heavens.

Watching Dovzhenko's use of heavy intercutting and low-angle extreme close-up, you are bound to recognize his influence on many filmmakers, from Andrei Tarkovsky to Terrence Malick.

All this month, the Gene Siskel Film Center of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago is presenting a dozen films by Alexander Dovzhenko (1894-1956), affording ambitious viewers a rare opportunity to see hard-to-find work by one of the medium's early masters.

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"Earth" plays at 6:30 p.m. Friday and at 4 p.m. Sunday at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St. Tickets: $8. 312-846-2600.

`Now, Voyager'

When it comes to pure, unadulterated melodrama, you can't get much more melodramatic than "Now, Voyager" ((star)(star)(star)(star)), the pull-no-punches story of an emotionally damaged young woman who blossoms into a woman of the world through the love of a dashing married man.

Bette Davis plays Charlotte Vale, the daughter of old Boston money who is ruled by her cruel and domineering mother (Gladys Cooper). She is helped by a caring psychiatrist (the great Claude Rains), who gets her on a boat cruise, where she meets and falls madly in love with the patient and charming Paul Henreid.

Ah, but their love is never meant to be, since Henreid is married to an ailing and very needy woman who has given him a child. So Charlotte expresses her love in a very different way, by doing for Henreid's emotionally damaged daughter what Henreid did for her, helping her out of her shell.

This is one of my favorite Bette Davis movies, in part because it never tries to hold back and soften its blows. It luxuriates in its melodrama, which is intensified by Max Steiner's memorable love theme that floats in whenever Henreid shows up.

I also like the way the characters in this film, especially Charlotte, almost always tell the truth when they are asked a question, instead of lying to artificially complicate the plot.

It is the sign of a strong story and a solid script.

This 1942 classic is directed by Irving Rapper and includes not only the famous sequence where Henreid lights two cigarettes before handing one to Charlotte, but also one of the most memorable closing lines in movie history: "Don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars."